


Old Men of the Meadow

by TheBookshelfDweller



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, oh god so much fluff, shire wedding customs, soppy married dorks, unexpected anniversary fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 21:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookshelfDweller/pseuds/TheBookshelfDweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the story of a day in April, and of how lucky they are that they've made it so far, that they lived to see each other's hair turn white, in Bilbo's case, and silver, in Thorin's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Men of the Meadow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the unexpected anniversary tag on Tumblr (apparently 26th April is the day Thorin and Bilbo meet) :)
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Edit: this fic has been translated to Italian by the lovely  
> KuroCyou and can be found here: http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3178579

 

* * *

_'Do you remember the dandelions?'_

It's one of Sam's grandchildren who finds the note. Ivy, Elanor's youngest, plucks it from where it's stuck in the back of the empty frame resting on one of the cabinets in the study. The family's never understood why the frame is never used, but Sam kept it empty and after a while everyone just got used to it. It was always just one of those things. One of the many small, unexplained curiosities of Bag End. The notes are another.

“Grandad, I found a new one”, Ivy says, padding over on her little hairy feet and handing Sam the bit of parchment.

“Well...we haven't had one of these in a while”, Sam replies, skimming over the words as he open the desk drawer. All the notes sleep in a small wooden box. It's a strange thing, that box, knobby and rough-edged, and made out of apple wood. But Sam found the first note right there, in that box, so it felt right to add all the others in too, as they came along.

They began finding the notes soon after moving in. At first, Sam thought they were just ripped pieces of old grocery lists or ripped-up letters, but soon it became clear the notes were a life form of their own. They lived like benevolent bed bugs all over the house, out of sight most of the time, save for the odd days when one would stumble out of its hiding place from between the covers of an old atlas, or stuck on the bottom of the old  flour tin no one really used any more.

 _'That pie was for later'_   
_'Your braids came undone'_   
_'Your favourite waistcoat has a jam stain'_   
_'It's April again'_   
_'Let's meet at the tree'_   
_'Do you remember the dandelions?'_

And even now, after all these years, the Gamgees keep finding the notes. It's as if Bag End is having its more nostalgic days, reminiscing about times long gone by. If there were ever conversations, they're long lost now. The notes are just thoughts floating in the air, detached from where they originally belonged.

Sometimes, Sam feels as if they're still guests in this place, as if there is a whole secret life going on behind their backs. Untold stories whispering in the night. The empty frame. The notes in a handwriting that looks familiar, but that no one can really place. Like a smile of a distant neighbour whose name you always forget, but warmer. The inexplicable scribbles on margins of the fairytale books, half-finished jokes. The pages still waiting for the punchline.

But there's a secret within the mystery, and the secret is that Sam knows. He knows that the empty frame used to hold a map, and that the notes were never just dispensable shopping lists scribbled in a hurry. Sam also knows that these are not his tales to tell. So, he doesn't. He watches his children and grandchildren find the notes and the little oddities – it's a family tradition by now, so to speak – and he lets them weave wild theories and fantastic stories based on a misplaced pair of spectacles or a few written words. There's no harm in all that. No harm at all, because they will never know all the untold stories, the small mythologies that were born and written within these walls.

But they knew their authors. So Sam takes the notes and tucks them away. _'Do you remember the dandelions_?', the note asks, and Sam doesn't remember, because that story is not his. It's theirs.

 

* * *

_Before_

The dratted dandelion fluff makes Bilbo sneeze. Always did, always will. Thorin, of course, finds this highly amusing. Well, endearing was the word he used, but Bilbo can see right through him. Thorin's gotten worse with years at keeping a straight face, or maybe Bilbo's gotten better at reading the tell-tale signs, but it's impossible to miss the way the lines around Thorin's mouth shift as he tries not to smile, and the way his eyes utterly fail at not shining with mirth. Silly dwarf.

(And if Bilbo makes sure to sneeze just a bit more loudly around Thorin, well...)

It's late April and the fields all around Bag End are littered with blooming dandelions. Some are still brightly yellow, like small suns caught on stems, while others have already traded their shine for lofty tufts of white. Old men of the meadow.

“I've had a thought”, says Thorin.

“A wise one, I have no doubt”, comes a dry reply from behind his back.

They're sitting in the grass, hidden between the tall, swaying green as Bilbo goes about the now-daily routine of combing and braiding Thorin's hair. The sun is setting and the air smells of wet earth.

“Infinitely wise”, Thorin smiles. “I was just thinking - your head will look very much like a dandelion when you're old and all your hair's turned white.”

That earns him a tug by the braid and a huff close to his ear, and Thorin can feel Bilbo shaking his head.

“If that is all the kingly wisdom you're capable of imparting these days”, he says. “then I'm glad you are not the one in charge of our food rations.”

Thorin snorts.

“If the size of our supper was anything to go by, I'd hardly call them rations. Small feasts is more like it.”

“Well, it was a special occasion. Besides, I didn't hear you complaining just back then.”

“I'm not complaining now, either.”

“Hm.”

The lapse into a comfortable silence as Bilbo finishes the last braid and Thorin settles his head in the hobbit's lap. The sky has turned purple and the stars are starting to show. Life in the Shire is different, Thorin must admit – softer, more sun-drenched than a dwarf is used to – but there is something very gentle about it which does not feel at all bad. Mahal knows they've all had their share of rough times. He looks up at Bilbo, and maybe it's the date, or maybe it's just the natural progression of things, but his next question slips from Thorin's tongue as easily as a trout through a stream.

“How are hobbits wed?”

Bilbo looks down at him, a confused frown-smile fixed on his face.

“Where's this coming from, then?”

Thorin shrugs.

“I was just wondering.”

The hobbit keeps looking suspicious, but after a few moments he starts talking.

“We plant a tree”, he says. “The newly-weds plant a tree in the garden of their new home. And then each year, on the day, when the tree starts birthing fruit, they pick one and share it. It's usually a fruit tree – apple, pear, plum, or sometimes a walnut. That way, the tree lives in both of them, just as they both tend to the tree.”

It's simple and yet somehow profound, Thorin thinks. How very fitting for hobbits.

“How do they pick which tree to plant?”, he asks. Bilbo shrugs.

“Oh, this way or that. Maybe they choose by which tree was in blossom the month they started courting, or which fruit was in the pies or the sweets given as gifts. Either way, they plant the tree, and tend to it for as long as they live.”

“And when one dies? Is the tree cut down?”

“Eru, no. That only happens if vows are broken while both parties still live. The first one who dies is buried beneath the tree, given to its roots for safekeeping, until their spouse joins them.”

Bilbo slides down so that he's lying next to Thorin, nestling his head on Thorin's chest, and the dwarf wraps his arms around him. With the grass whispering around them, and the crickets cautiously calling out to the night, seeking another, or just mourning the faded daylight, Thorin thinks he understands trees a little bit better. If he could grow roots to stay forever like this he would reach into the earth this very moment, digging until he found water or stone, bones or other roots to hang onto. All the tales of Mahal's halls, of great forges and vast halls of stone seem somehow less grand compared with these simple fields and weed-flowers that can fly. Thorin's always known his last resting place would be in the stone of Erebor, known it as surely as he did his own name. Burials in the ground, for dwarves, were the worst kind of blasphemy.

But that was before. Now, he's bent on fighting faith and the cosmic order of things, if that's what he takes. Besides, sleeping down in the roots of a tree when the time comes does not sound as bad as all that. It sounds gentle. And far less lonely.

“And what happens to those who never marry?”, he asks. “Where are they buried?”

“Well, not that many in the Shire remain bachelors or spinsters”; Bilbo says. “But those who do get buried under their Birth Tree. It's the tree parents plant when a young one is born, a promise or a wish, of sorts, for their future.”

“That's quite a lot of trees.”

“We hobbits like growing things.”

“So I have noticed.”

Idly stroking Bilbo's back, Thorin wonders if happiness knows that it's made out of such simple matters like the warmth of another body, a calm night, and a single day in April which comes around every year, but one year came around carrying a dwarf to a hobbit's doorstep and started a journey they were so lucky to now travel together.  

“What is yours?”

“Hm?” Bilbo hums, twiddling with a bead on one of Thorin's braids.

“What is your Birth Tree?”

Bilbo steals a look at Thorin.

“Would you believe me if I told you it's an oak?”

“Probably not.”

“Good,” Bilbo snorts. “Because it's not. It's a weeping willow, in fact.”

Thorin frowns. “An odd choice, I would think, for a child.”

“So would most of the Shire.” The smile in Bilbo's voice is loud, the sort of wistful one he sometimes gets when his eyes mist over with some far-away look. “It was my mother's choice, naturally. She always said it suited me.”

It is Thorin's turn to smile now. He would have liked to have known Belladonna Baggins. If her son is anything to go by (and Thorin will insist he is everything to go by, any day of the week), she was a small force of nature all unto herself.

“I can see why.”

“Can you now?” Bilbo's voice is still distant, politely conversational at best, as if he's already somewhere else, but Thorin shifts so he can look him in the eyes. “I never looked at it that way. I always thought they were sad trees, in a way, all bent down like that. There's a fairytale, you know. About weeping willows. It is said that once Yvanna thought she'd lost her husband, so she cut all her hair in grief and the winds scattered it across Arda. Then she walked the lands and wept, and anywhere where her hair had fallen and was watered by her tears, strange, bent-down trees sprouted, sweeping their silver-leaved branches all over the ground, like hands searching for something they've lost. The stories say that Yvanna's tears made lakes, and that this is why weeping willows so often grow by the water. In the end, her husband turned up alive, but the trees  stayed, forever looking to the ground in some forgotten sorrow, because the first water they ever tasted were tears, and their leaves now carry memories of salt and sadness.”

“I don't think your mother chose your tree for its sadness, azyungel”, Thorin says, willing Bilbo to understand. “Your mother was wise. She didn't chose a tree that would be felled by any stronger breeze, nor did she pick a frilly one just for the beauty of it. Willow trees may look frail, but they are stronger than many others. They bend under violent gusts of wind, but very rarely break. Good for bows, good for weaving shelters on the road. And if I remember correctly, they are also used for healing. Their bark eases pain, calms a feverish mind. It's bitter medicine, but lifesaving, if one can bare to swallow it.”

“Well...you make it sound all heroic, talking like that”, Bilbo murmurs, but Thorin smiles because he knows it's just what Bilbo does when he is touched and just slightly embarrassed. It's as much a part of who he is as his loyalty and silly gestures of the heart. And Thorin loves him from the very tips of his blushing ears to the last hair on his feet.

“Will you plant a tree with me, Bilbo?”, he asks. It's that simple. It's that right.

Bilbo smiles, and it's not as if they were planning on spending their lives in any fashion apart from together, so the answer comes as easily as the question.

“Yes, I will.”

He bends down, planting a gentle kiss on Thorin's lips before leaning his forehead against Thorin's. The tips of their noses are touching and they've both gone a bit cross-eyed from trying to look into each other's eyes, but it's still a moment worth of growing roots.

“Which should we plant then?”, Thorin muses.

“Figs are your favourite”, Bilbo replies.

“You hate figs.”

“Well, then, an oak is an obvious choice. I've already planted the acorn from Beorn's garden, but we can easily find some good ones.”

“We cannot eat acorns.”

“No, we cannot.”

“I rather think that would be unusual then, would it not?”

“Highly so. But I have learnt not to care much for the usual”, he says in all seriousness, looking down at Thorin. “Let's plant an oak, Thorin, and we'll find a way. I'll make acorn flour and you can  carve us shields out of the fallen branches.”

“Not much use for shields in the Shire.”

“Then carve us bowls and plates and other trinkets that we need”, Bilbo whispers, holding Thorin's face. “Carve a life's worth of pottery and footstools and boxes. And we'll plant a whole orchard in the mean time – pears for comfort, figs for plenty, and plums for promises kept – and we'll eat that fruit from the plates and the bowls. And we'll never run out of fruit until we're both old and all our hair's gone white. Old men of the meadow, the two of us.”

Thorin's survived battles and journeys and grief, but none of that's ever cleaved into him like Bilbo's words do, every time. But as beautiful and heartfelt as they are, they don't sit right. An oak would be an obvious choice, but not the right one, Thorin muses. Naturally, he is forever bound to it, by name and legend, but it is the tree of his battles, of his storms and hardships. That is not what he wants now. That is not what he and Bilbo are here. But he's not Bilbo, so Thorin cannot put all this into words, not so they would sound right.

“Let's plant an apple”, he says instead.

“An apple?”, Bilbo frowns. Thorin wants to kiss the frown away.

“Yes. One of the first nights of our journey, you snuck out to the ponies, do you remember?”

“There were so many nights of our journey Thorin. And many more spectacular ones, at that.”

“Well, you did. And do you know what you did, ghivashel?”

Bilbo thinks on it, trying to recall the night of which Thorin speaks, but Thorin helps him.

“You gave an apple to your pony."

“Myrtle.”

“Yes. You gave an apple to Myrtle, even though you knew we'd probably run out of fruit in the depth of winter and you'd probably go without tasting apples for quite some time. But you did it anyway, when there was nothing in it for you.”

“It was just an apple, Thorin.”

“No. It was kindness. Pure, untainted kindness. And, for me a reminder.”

“Reminder of what?”

“That I should strive to remember one thing, even if I forget all else: that there is still some good in the world, and that it's worth fighting for. I don't think I loved you yet, back then, but it was then that I realised I couldn't go on without respecting you.”

“Silly dwarf”, Bilbo says, but his eyes are shiny and his mouth is just on the cusp of a smile, so it's an endearment of the best kind, when he says it like that. “Fine. Have it your way then. We'll plant an apple. You'll be sick of cider and apple pies by the end of the month, though, mark my words.”

Thorin always marks Bilbo's words, and Bilbo knows it, so he doesn't say anything, just kisses the top of Bilbo's head. Laying back down, with his ear on Thorin's heart, Bilbo picks a dandelion, studying the white fluff for a few quiet moments as Thorin studies him. The wind blows a few dandelion seeds into Bilbo's hair and Thorin' beard, causing the hobbit to sneeze, which in turn causes Thorin to chuckle, trying and failing to hide it.

Bilbo turns to shoot him a dirty look, but he stops midway and looks back at the offending flower in his hand again.

“Oh, sweet Yvanna”, he moans suddenly, voice full of horror.

“What is it?”

“You're right. I am going to look just like a dandelion when my hair turns white.”

Thorin's laughter drowns out the songs of crickets and as Bilbo joins him they reach for each other, tangling in the grass, a laughing heap of limbs, the stars fly from the ground to the sky in a swarm of fireflies.

 

* * *

_Now_

There's no apple tree in the garden in Bag End. There's a stump of one, far in the back, but the tree's been gone for years and years now. When the Orcs came to the Shire, many trees were lost to fire and axes during the Scouring.

There's only a small wooden box in the desk drawer and an apple sapling growing stronger with each passing spring.

 

* * *

_Neither now nor then_

“Where's the apple?”

“I gave it to the pony.”

“Bilbo.”

Bilbo looks up at his husband. There are too many lines on Thorin's face that weren't put there by laughter, and Bilbo loathes their causes. He's packing his study. They leave for Rivendell in a day. It's been deemed safer than the Shire, in these tumultuous times. They've survived the Scouring, but their tree has not.

“That pony is about to travel half across Middle Earth.”

“And that was the last apple from our tree.”

“I know.”

For the first time in several decades, they're breaking the tradition. There won't be an apple shared on their anniversary, and by Bilbo's doing, no less. Highly unusual. But then again, Bilbo's learnt to love the unusual a long time ago.

“Here”, he says, walking over to Thorin. “I kept this. Had a feeling you might be a bit miffed about the apple.”

He takes Thorin's hand in his and drops something in his palm.

“I took them from the last apple”, he says. Thorin looks down at the apple seeds and then back at Bilbo.

“Trees are broken and burnt, Thorin. It happens”, Bilbo says. “Nothing to be done about it. But not us, love. Never us. We begin again. We've done it once before. We can do it again. Start anew. Besides, ashes are good for the ground.”

Thorin smiles and holds him close, and Bilbo thinks how lucky they were. How lucky they still are, that they've made it so far, that they lived to see each other's hair turn white, in Bilbo's case, and silver, in Thorin's. Flowers and precious metals. They truly are old men of the meadow now.

Later, as he watches Thorin carefully bury the seeds in a patch of soil, he reaches a for a scrap of parchment and a quill.

 _'Do you remember the dandelions?'_ , he writes.  

Bilbo puts the note in the frame of the map of Erebor, where he knows Thorin will find it. He won't take it out – he never moves the notes – and it will probably stay there long after they've gone, but he'll see it. And he will remember - the good is still there, and it is still worth fighting for.

  



End file.
